Kirah… Visions of his little sister came unbidden to mind. His arms were still on the ball. Guerrand turned his head slightly and looked into the shimmering globe. He saw his scrappy sister huddled among the pillows on the window seat in her room. She'd never looked so forlorn. In her hand, she clutched a twisted scrap of parchment.

"Who's that?"

"My sister," gulped Guerrand. "She's the one I promised I'd return for."

"What's that she's holding?"

Guerrand knew, without seeing his own script, that

it must be the note he'd left her on the night of his departure for the Tower of High Sorcery. He stared, unblinking, at her crystal-clear image, wishing he could touch her for a moment and reassure her.

"Justarius, I've got to go back and warn them of the Berwick's plans," Guerrand said softly, his eyes focused on Kirah's image.

"Look away from the crystal ball, Guerrand," his master said gently, lifting the apprentice's arms from its surface. "You're suffering mental strain from having watched too long. I told you it draws its power from the viewer, especially a novice. For your own sake, you must look away now or risk losing your mind to the globe."

Reluctantly, Guerrand let his arms be pulled from the cool, leaded glass globe. He felt a physical pain when the image of Kirah disappeared. Guerrand dug his fists into his eyes. "Thank you, I didn't realize."

He turned bleary eyes on his master. "This doesn't change my need to warn them. I must ask you for a short recess from my studies-a month, perhaps. I know it's a great deal to ask, but surely you can understand."

Justarius rubbed his own face wearily. Guerrand could see that he was carefully weighing his response. "I understand the desire, but I cannot grant your request."

"What?"

Justarius didn't blink. "You recall when first I selected you to be my apprentice?" Guerrand nodded grudgingly. "I informed you when you accepted my offer to join the Order of the Red Robes that you were pledging yourself to magic, and magic alone. Magic will not tolerate distractions in the minds of its wielders, particularly during the critical apprentice years."

Guerrand's anger flared. "You mean you won't tolerate it! You can't stand the thought that I am loyal to anyone but you!"

Justarius's eyes narrowed just slightly. "If you think that, then you have much to learn about me, and even more about the commitment you made to magic. I am but a facilitator for learning the Art, Guerrand. I gain no personal prestige, no additional power for teaching you. I do it for magic, to increase its presence in our world, because my loyalty is to magic."

"You may forbid me to return and warn my family," said Guerrand, "but you can't stop me from doing it."

"I've forbidden you nothing, Guerrand," the archmage said evenly. "Your apprenticeship is not a prison sentence. You still have free will. But I can, and I would, stop you from returning here. If you choose to leave, your spot would be immediately and irrevocably filled."

"How can you ask me to forsake my family?" Guerrand demanded, his body shaking with frustration.

"Didn't you make that choice when you left for the tower?" When Guerrand winced, Justarius added more gently, "I ask you only to remain loyal to magic, and your study of it."

"But it's the same thing!" cried Guerrand, his fingers gripping the table edge. "I swore an oath to Kirah-if ever she needed me-I would know it and return."

Justarius heaved a sigh. "Only you can decide which vow is more important to you. In your guilty deliberations, I suggest you consider these things, as well. Would Cormac believe you if you returned with news that, through magical means, you've learned of a surprise raid by the Berwicks? He has already heard of that possibility proposed by his own advisors and rejected it. Would he listen more closely to you, after the way you left?"

"He's not mad about that." Guerrand looked defensive. "You heard him-he's almost happy that I left."

"Only because he believes he's got his coveted land anyway. I suspect that your brother's ire would quickly return once he remembered that your departure necessitated its seizure. Under any circumstances, he would not welcome your magical assistance."

Guerrand frowned his frustration. "Are you trying to dissuade me from going?"

"We have all had to make sacrifices for our art, Guerrand." Justarius gave his apprentice's arm a reassuring pat. "Lest you think you are casting your family to the wolves, realize, too, that the gods have plans that we mortals may never know or understand."

"Are you saying that it doesn't really matter what we decide, the gods will do as they like with us?"

"Not at all," said Justarius, with a single shake of his dark head. "I've said I believe in free will. But I also believe that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the outcome is in our favor, sometimes against. Frequently we never see the result at all." He stood and pulled Guerrand to his feet. "Right now, we are seeing the result of too much to think about all at once. Go rest, and I'll have Denbigh send some food to your room."

As Guerrand shuffled, numb, through the birch-wood door, he heard Justarius mumble behind him, "That leaves one other question unanswered, the one we initially sought. If neither your brother nor Berwick has sent someone after you, then who rigged the joust? More important, why?"

Guerrand stopped in Justarius's study and turned, surprised that he had forgotten all about that. "Do you suspect someone?"

Justarius calmly swallowed the last of his lemon tonic. "I suspect everyone and I suspect no one. Which is why, for your own safety, you mustn't tell a soul that we suspect someone wants you harmed."

That's easy, Guerrand thought as he left the room. I understand little enough to tell.

Dispirited, Guerrand toed a seashell lodged in the fieldstone-and-dirt quay. He'd taken Justarius's advice, returned to his room, and tried to eat the roast groundhog and fresh pomegranate Denbigh had brought him on a tray. Though it had smelled delicious, Guerrand found he had as little appetite as answers to his dilemma. And so he'd wandered down to the waterfront to watch the ships come and go, as he often had back in Northern Ergoth.

When Guerrand pondered the choices before him, his chest felt as if a huge cord encircled it and was being pulled ever tighter, until he could scarcely breathe. There was no answer that allowed him to emerge whole. If he left to warn his family, he was again sacrificing his desires-his future-to his family, when only Kirah seemed to care for his wishes. It had taken him a score of years to summon the courage to escape that intolerable situation. Justarius would never take him back, and it was most unlikely he would secure another master, let alone one as respected as the archmage.

Just then, a familiar-looking sea gull skidded across the dirt road with a harsh, deep "kyeow."

"Oh, hello, Zagarus," Guerrand said lifelessly.

And a cheery hello to you, too, said the bird, springing on webbed, yellow-green feet to Guerrand's side. Is Justarius working you too hard?

"If only that were the problem. I could just stay up later, work a little harder. No," he said with a rueful shake of his shaggy head, "it's not that simple."

Tell me about it. Maybe I can think of a solution. He ruffled up his chest feathers. I am, after all, a hooded, black-backed Ergothian sea gull, the largest, most strikingly beautiful and intelligent of all seabirds.

In no mood for the gull's ego or humor, Guerrand nevertheless noted drolly the addition of the word "intelligent" to Zagarus's favorite description of himself. Still, he knew the bird would want to know if Kirah were in danger, and so he told Zagarus of the visions in the crystal ball and the choice he had to make.